Life, Death, and Dogs
It feels like everything in my parents’ house is dying.
“Is your dad like that too? About death?”
He paused, as if searching for something buried deep within the cracks of time. “No, I don’t think so,” he finally said, his voice soft like the whispers of the wind that once swept through the fields where we played as kids. I could almost see it again, that green patch of earth by the apartments where baseballs arced lazily in the late afternoon sun just before we were called for dinner. But now we’re older, 27 and 28, walking down the blush-pink corridors of my sister’s condominium. The walls, painted in hues too delicate for the weight of our conversation, seemed to absorb the echoes of our words.
His dog—old, graying at the edges—was nearly the same age as Ddori had been when he passed. Ddori, my childhood dog. My parents never told me when it happened; only when I returned home from Providence in the summer of 2022 did I find out. I rushed downstairs, ready to greet the dogs like I always did, but the basement was hollow. Cleared out. Everything that had belonged to that little <10lb Maltese—his cage, food bowls, pillows—gone. Erased, as if he had never existed at all. It was the same with Weenie, my first dog. My father was meticulous about it, too. Quiet, precise, as if death was something to be swept clean like dust from a corner. My parents had always been strange about death.
It never felt right to me. No collar, no keepsake, no small memory left behind to hold onto. Just a void. The absence of Ddori sat heavier, though, because I had called home almost every week, asking after him and Kai. Each time, my parents told me, so easily, that everything was fine.
Earlier that winter, when the calendar flipped to 2022, I had suggested euthanasia. Ddori was 15 then, his body betraying him in small ways—signs of Alzheimer’s, dental disease so severe his breath reeked of rot. His last years were spent tucked away in the basement, his eyes crusted shut, wrapped in doggy diapers. Still, I loved him. Loved him in the way only a child could, holding onto that memory of when we first adopted him. The best day of my childhood. The day I learned that love and pain were two sides of the same coin.
I knew he wouldn’t make it to my next visit home. I spent that winter break kneeling by his cage, brushing his thinning fur, whispering stories of how he had been the best dog in the world. I cradled him, my awkward, crooked-backed dog, and told him everything. That I loved him. That I was sorry. That maybe adopting Kai had hastened his decline. And in the end, I thanked him for being with me through it all—from fifth grade to grad school. I tucked him into his bed, wishing him a quiet, peaceful passing. But the hardest part wasn’t the loss itself. It was the choice. The balance between letting go and holding on to something already half-gone.
I had brought up euthanasia to my parents more than once, but they recoiled each time, especially my mother. To her, it wasn’t just about Ddori—it was about the unspoken fear that I might one day choose the same for them. She couldn’t see the distinction between human life and a dog’s. But to me, that line was clear. If it came down to it, I would sacrifice a dog’s life to save a human’s—even a stranger’s.
